Inventors of water cremation machine say B.C. laws could push them out

On a sunny Friday, Theo Nguyen and Stan Hussey unlatch the doors of a shipping container in a lot behind their Burnaby, B.C., workshop. Outside, spools of fibre optic cable line a fence. Inside, a slight smell of ammonia hangs in the air.

The remains of their most recent test — 16 hog heads — are laid out next to the machine on a metal stretcher hooked up to an overhead winch. Initially planned as a machine to keep him and his wife busy in retirement, the plan took a turn one night at his local Toastmasters Club in North Vancouver. He remembers speaking to fellow member Guy Heywood, a financier who had experience in the funeral industry.

'A huge positive change,' says funeral home owner Last year, Nguyen and Hussey began testing the machine on animal remains. So far, those have included pigs, goats, deer and even a black bear found as roadkill near Salmon Arm where the company eventually hopes to ramp up manufacturing at a retrofitted mill.

He cited data that shows every year, 90 per cent of people who die in B.C. are later cremated by flame. The process, which every year burns about 30,000 bodies at 1,800 degrees Celsius, releases an estimated 10 million kilograms of carbon into the atmosphere. In an email, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General said any changes to existing laws governing the disposal of human remains has a number of implications, and would require engagement within the provincial government, with municipalities and industry.

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